Ampicillin (AMP) and AMP resistant bacteria are emerging concerns which threaten public health due to heavy use of antibiotics and resistance development of bacteria in the water environment. Therefore, effective treatment to treat AMP contaminated water is necessary. In this study, we examined the energy efficient treatment of AMP and AMP resistant bacteria driven by UV-LED/chlorine reaction. AMP was analyzed by using LC-MS/MS Gene removal was evaluated by using real-time qPCR and NanoDrop. UV-LED/chlorine reaction showed the best E. coli disinfection ability among UV-LED photolysis, chlorination, and UV-LED/chlorine reactions. AMP and AMP resistant E. coli degradation during UV-LED/chlorine followed the pseudo-first order kinetics. We evaluated disinfection ability of E. coli removal during each treatment process (Fig. 1(a)). Fig. 1(a) showed that chlorination-only reaction showed the lowest removal efficiency of E. coli (3.5 × 10-1 min-1). While 4 log removal was achieved at 30 min during chlorination, UV-LED photolysis showed better disinfection result (3.9 × 10-1 min-1) within 30 min. We observed 6 log removal within only 10 min during UV-LED/chlorination process (1.4 min-1). However, if ampicillin co-existed in the sample, the removal rate constant of E.coli decreased (4.7 × 10-1 min-1). Since ampicillin acted as a radical and free available scavenger, it takes more time to get a 6 log removal. Additionally, gene removal was also evaluated using real-time qPCR (Fig. 1(b)). It showed that chlorination did not remove ARG while both UV-LED photolysis and UV-LED/chlorine process showed ARG removal.

Ampicillin (AMP) degradation and AMP resistant E.coli and its gene removal by UV-LED/chlorine process

2019 Fall National Meeting

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